James 2:26

Jam 2:26 . Γὰρ , for ) For is used in the place of therefore , as Romans 3:28 , note.— τὸ σῶμα χωρὶς πνεύματος , the body without a spirit ) πνεῦμα often denotes πνοὴν , the breath , which is the sign of life; but when it is opposed to the body , it denotes the spirit or soul: nor is that sense foreign to the meaning of this passage. Faith without works resembles a lifeless body; but it does not therefore follow that living faith derives its life from works. It has been already explained, at Jam 2:21 , why James has mentioned works rather than the peculiar energy of faith. Vain pretenders have the form , but not the power of godliness . 2 Timothy 3:5 ; Titus 1:16 .

26. Faith is a spiritual thing: works are material. Hence we might expect faith to answer to the spirit, works to the body. But James reverses this. He therefore does not mean that faith in all cases answers to the body; but the FORM of faith without the working reality answers to the body without the animating spirit. It does not follow that living faith derives its life from works, as the body derives its life from the animating spirit.

The spirit: this may be understood either, according to the marginal reading, of the breath; and then the sense is, that life and breath being inseparable companions, as the the of breath argues want of life in the body, so, lively faith and works being as inseparable, want of works argues want of life in faith: or, according to the reading in the text, spirit, taking it for that substance which animates the body, and is the cause of vital functions in it, which is sometimes called spirit, Psalm 31:5 Ecclesiastes 12:7 1 Corinthians 2:11 ; and then the sense is, that as a body is without a soul, so faith is without works, i.e. both are dead. As a body without the soul hath the shape and lineaments of a man, but nothing that may discover life in it; so faith without works may be like true faith, have some resemblance of it, but hath nothing to discover the truth and life of it. So faith; not true faith, for that cannot be dead, but an empty profession of faith, which is rather called faith by way of concession, or because of some likeness it hath to it, than really is so; as a dead body, though called a body, is really but a carcass.

(26) As the body without the spirit . . . —A closing simile of much force, As the body without the spirit, so faith without works. But the term “without” is hardly strong enough to represent the Greek “apart from.” Of our own human wisdom we had been rather inclined to say that works were likest to the body, and faith to the breath or animation thereof. “The Apostle’s view,” says Alford, “seems to be this, Faith is the body, the sum and substance of the Christian life; works (= obedience) the moving and quickening of that body, just as the spirit is the moving and quickening principle of the natural body. So that ‘ as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.’ ”

26 . For as the body without the spirit is dead …] Some MSS. omit the conjunction, but the evidence for retaining it preponderates. The reasoning seems to refer Rahab’s justification by works to the wider law that faith without works is dead (as in James 2:17 ) and therefore cannot justify. Our usual mode of thought would lead us to speak of works, the outward visible acts, as the body, and of faith as the spirit or vivifying principle. From St James’s standpoint, however, faith “by itself” was simply the assent of the intellect to a dogma or series of dogmas, and this seemed to him to be “dead” until it was vitalised by love shewing itself in act. St Paul reproves the deadness of mere morality, St James that of mere orthodoxy. St James, it will be noted, adopts the simple division of man’s nature into “body and spirit,” rather than St Paul’s more philosophical trichotomy of “body, soul and spirit.” 1 Thessalonians 5:23 . Comp. note on ch. James 3:13 . faith without works ] More literally, faith apart from works . ON THE TEACHING OF ST PAUL AND ST JAMES The view which has been given in the notes seems to the writer clear and coherent in itself, consistent with what we know as to the relations between the two Apostles, and involving less violence of interpretation than any other hypothesis.

Two other views have, however, been maintained with arguments more or less plausible, and it will be well to notice them briefly. (1) There is the position assumed by some of the bolder critics of the French and German Schools, that there was a real antagonism in the Apostolic Church, not only between the Judaizing teachers and St Paul, but between that Apostle and the three, Peter, James, and John, to whom the Church of the Circumcision looked as its natural leaders. On this assumption, the writer of the Acts of the Apostles strives to gloss over the divergence of the two parties, and to represent an unreal unity. The messages to the Seven Churches are “a cry of passionate hate against St Paul and his followers” (Renan, St Paul , p. 367). When St James says, “Wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead,” he is probably pointing at St Paul himself. From the point of view of those who hold this theory it is, perhaps, a small thing that it is inconsistent with the belief that the teaching of St James and of St Paul had, as its source, the inspiration of the Eternal Spirit, who, though working in many different ways and with wide diversity of gifts, is yet the Spirit of the Truth which is essentially one. But on simply historical grounds the theory is, it is believed, untenable.